I can’t remember when it started, but it was a while ago - Visual Studio Code started to show very strange font things when I have Editor: Render Whitespace turned on.
This should look like…
FInding the relevant thing to search for took… far too long. I ended up searching for “dot” and then clicking on random things in the Wikipedia page until I found Interpunct, and the Catalan usage of it…
The punt volat (“flying point”) is used in Catalan between two Ls in cases where each belongs to a separate syllable, for example cel·la, “cell”.
The fix
Add this to settings.json in VS Code.
"editor.fontLigatures": "'ccmp' off"
References
- Issue #192 in adobe-fonts/source-code-pro - Some character sequences get merged"
- Issue #106583 in microsoft/vscode - “l·l” Ligature in “Source Code Pro” incorrectly invoked when render whitespace is enabled